Yes. I think that the curse of Adam is physical death, not spiritual death. "You are dirt, and to dirt you shall return" - God's words to Adam, refers to physical dissolution. In a similar vein, when God worries about Adam reaching out to the tree of life and living forever, he expels them from Eden and puts the Cherubim with the flaming sword there. (Presumably the Tree of Life drowned in the flood, so there isn't some valley somewhere with a Cherubim and a flaming sword in it, waiting for some hapless Dr. Livingstone to blunder into it.)
When I read this, it seems very much to be talking about physical death.
Likewise the whole list of the ancients, each of their lives is described. Then it says "And then he died."
I don't take "died" to be in a spiritual sense but in a literal physical sense, just as the description of Enoch walking with God and not being here I take literally, and I take Elijah being taken up literally.
Or rather, I should say that I take them literally for the purposes of reading the text.
Pulling back, I know that there isn't any evidence of a world-wide, planet drowning flood. High seas everywhere, yes. Mount Everest under water? No.
Similarly, I know that man probably descended from primates, and that the genetic markers strongly indicate that hominids walked out of Africa a million years ago, and dispersed and differentiated. To the extent there was a Garden of Eden where man originated, it may not have been by the Tigris and Euphrates at all, but somewhere near Lake Victoria and Mt. Kilamanjaro.
I know that creatures have been dying on this planet for a billion years and more, and that man didn't cause that.
So, what am I to actually make of Genesis?
It's too late to go into it tonight. Perhaps tomorrow. I think it is the story of Everyman and Everywoman, and describes each and every one of ours naked birth rise in innocence to adolescence, and Fall, when that knowledge of good and evil blossoms in us with that temptation to sin, that overwhelming temptation, which none resists.
I don't think physical death is a punishment for anything, but a change of state from the circles of this world to the unadumbrated soul which goes back to God.
And I don't expect anybody to share this view, so I don't think I need to elaborate on it even tomorrow.
Good night.
Night & I look forward to getting into this further with you tomorrow.
You missed the party last fall. She was quite a show! LOL.
Revelation 2:7
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God."
Call me crazy, if you want, but I think the accepted plate mapping currently used is... interesting & in need of a lot of tweeking. There are "sea bottoms" near the tops of peaks.